But the business of intelligent criticism is to be in touch with
everything. "Tout comprendre, c'est tout pardonner," as the French
ethical maxim has it, may be modified into the true motto of æsthetic
criticism, "Tout comprendre, c'est tout justifier." Of course, by
"criticism" one does not mean pedagogy, as so many people constantly
imagine, nor does justifying everything include bad drawing. But as
Lebrun, for example, is not nowadays held up as a model to young
painters, and is not to be accused of bad drawing, why do we so entirely
dispense ourselves from comprehending him at all? Lebrun is, perhaps,
not a painter of enough personal importance to repay attentive
consideration, and historic importance does not greatly concern
criticism. But we pass him by on the ground of his conventionality,
without remembering that what appears conventional to us was in his case
not only sincerity but aggressive enthusiasm. If there ever was a
painter who exercised what creative and imaginative faculty he had with
an absolute gusto, Lebrun did so. He interested his contemporaries
immensely; no painter ever ruled more unrivalled. He fails to interest
us because we have another point of view. We believe in our point of
view and disbelieve in his as a matter of course; and it would be
self-contradictory to say, in the interests of critical catholicity,
that in our opinion his may be as sound as our own. But to say that he
has no point of view whatever--to say, in general, that modern classic
art is perfunctory and mere formulary--is to be guilty of what has
always been the inherent vice of protestantism in all fields of mental
activity.

Nowhere has protestantism exhibited this defect more palpably than in
the course of evolution of schools of painting. Pre-Raphaelitism is
perhaps the only exception, and pre-Raphaelitism was a violent and
emotional counter-revolution rather than a movement characterized by